Conferences: Health Forum,Yale, IHPM-Employer, Holistic Primary Care
Summary: These conferences all offer a little something different. The AHA/Health Forum's 6th Integrative Medicine for Healthcare Organizations presents hospital best practices enlivened by comments from major healthcare taking heads, including the successful model at Woodwinds campus led by Northwestern Health Sciences University; Yale's IM program offers its kick-off conference; Holistic Primary Care gets into conferencing by focusing on the business of integrative practice success; and, for those who might wish to learn about the metrics and language for partnering with a stakeholder interested in health creation, the Institute for Health and Productivity Management's offers both immersion in employer-think and and employer-focused complementary, alternative and integrative medicine track.
 1. Health Forum: Leadership and Business Strategies for Integrative Health Care, May 15-17, 2008, Phoenix
This conference, a 6th annual, is always very rich for those working on hospital-based strategies. The program sponsor is the American Hospital Association's for-profit subsidiary, Health Forum. The program typically offers good practical information plus keynotes from visionary hospital and health systems thinkers. One interesting choice this year is a focus on the
successful Woodwinds Natural Care Center, managed for the celebrated healthcare campus through
Northwestern Health Sciences University (NHSU) and featuring a team of NHSU
people. The leading edge work of the "optimal healing environments" group at the Samueli Institute is present here, both with their own people and some of their partner hospitals. The pre-conference sessions include one by HeartMath; an intensive on building a program (co-led by Nancy Hart, MBA, a long-time consultant in the field); and a look at philanthropy as a "key component in building a program." Last year, with Samueli Institute as a full conference partner, the conference jumped in attendance from roughly 150 to 250. I anticipate it will be energetic again. One change: the program developer, Sita Ananth, MHA, an Integrator adviser and the long-time Health Forum CAM leader, took a job with Samueli mid-year. Phoenix, Arizona.
2. Yale Integrative Medicine Offers Kick-off Conference - April 2, 2008
While I don't always run conference information I choose this conference for a couple reasons. One is that it is sponsored by the Yale School of Medicine. The name carries weight in our culture. (See Integrator article: "Yale Integrative Medicine: A Story of Growing Acceptance from Medical Leaders," November 14, 2007.)
The second is that a sometimes Integrator contributor, Ather Ali, ND, MPH (of ideas and some commentary) asked me to! The third is that the program director David Katz, MD, MPH, has always been remarkably inclusive in his view of integrative medicine as an essentially interdisciplinary affair. The internal goal for Integrative Medicine at Yale is to highlight the diversity of CAM and CAM-related activities at the academic health center. The web-link states: "This course was created as the first academic forum that will showcase Yale-based CAM research and integrative models of medical care, educating practitioners with credible and reliable information about CAM therapies, and providing an opportunity for community building and future research collaboration." The program was the subject of a significant feature in the February/March issue of Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal. Comment: Last I checked, however, there was no program content on integrating the healing energy of integrative medicine into the care and transformation of members of the Order of Skull and Bones. Here's hoping they'll get to that, soon. New Haven. Connecticut.
3. The Employer Connection: Institute for Health and Productivity Management - March 31, April 2
This conference, for which I am co-moderating a complementary, alternative and integrative medicine(CAIM) track with Cathy Baase, MD, corporate medical director for Dow Chemical, was the subject of an Integrator feature (IHPM Conference to Cross-Fertilize Employers/Integrative Health Care: March 31-April 2, Orlando, February 4, 2008). For CAIM practitioners, integrative clinic leaders, educators and researchers, the meeting may be as useful for what's outside the track - learning the metrics for how employers approach health and productivity - as for what's in the track. The track itself will include some exemplary pilots: an onsite mind-body, group-focused program with Chrysler, 4 Canada Post (the Canadian postal service) pilots with whole practice naturopathic/acupuncture interventions via a partnership with Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine; and the intriguing Florida Medicaid pilot led by Integrator sponsor Alternative Medicine Integration Group, which, while developed for a government payer, uses many of the kinds of outcomes that are meaningful to employers. Learning to work with the employer and understanding the metrics of interest to employers in health and productivity management appears to be a context in which you can actually focus on creating healthy, productive, energetic clients, rather than merely achieving some reductive outcomes. Orlando, Florida.
 4. Business: "Heal Thy Practice: Transforming Primary Care" - Oct 31-Nov 2, 2008
Holistic Primary Care, and its owner-operator team of Erik Goldman, editor and Meg Sinclair, publisher, have entered the conferencing business. Long-time observers and reporters and fellow-travelers in the emerging fields of integrative and holistic practice, the team realized that an area which needs focus across the disciplines is business models and business success. This conference promises the following: "A continuing education conference
exploring viable practice models and successful business strategies for physicians
wishing to regain their independence, better serve their patients, and build thriving
prevention-oriented, health-centered medical practices." Some of the promised themes include: concierge models, house calls, group nutrition, practice management nuts and bolts, corporate wellness, creating new revenue centers, use of electronic medical records an more. The chair is Grace L. Keenan, MD, the founder and director, of NOVA Medical Group,
which is described as "a four-site fully integrative health care group in Northern Virginia." A special bonus is a Halloween Gala. Tucson, Arizona.
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